Long before the industrialization and rise of communism, Chinese civilization has been built peculiarly on the basis of the family. The reason is that Chinese people have a unique family value system that would put family above their individual and personal needs; this is what we called familism. The value implicitly shown in the Chinese word for family is the pictorial representation of several people under a roof, meaning possibly man, wife, and children. According to the Chinese proverbs, ¡§If there are no families, there will be no country¡, it seems that the Chinese made familism even more central in that society than in most. However, Chinese families¡ value system is gradually perished and was replaced by a new set of family values under the effect of modern individualism. When comparing my family to that of my grandparents, indeed the two have a lot of differences, mostly manifest in their family structure, thinking, rituals, attitudes, and name system.
             My grandparents have three sons and seven daughters. Until now, the grandparents¡ family consists of three generations with at least thirty members. It is very interesting once the whole family had traveled together on the plane I was shocked by the huge bunch of people bearing the same surname. Traditional Chinese people see this as a clan which is the root of Chinese civilization, the larger the clan formed; meaning that the family is fortunate for the continuation of the surname and power. In the olden days in China, the richest people always came from the most powerful clan, and only the most fortunate ones can continue their surname, for example, Deng Xiao Ping, the former Chinese statesman was come from the clan of ¡§Deng¡, is one of the most fortunate surnames in China. While the Chinese names contain three characters, the seven daughters shared the same second character in their names, and the three sons shared another second character in their names. The sec...